CIRCLE GAME

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Pause for breath…and to admire the view.  Aaah… The storms have taken out the trash from the trees and hedges. In late January everything looks stripped and bare, ready for a spring and summer to come. To recap…

This all began in 2016, when I began to walk to every parish in the Diocese of Peterborough. My house rules were that I’d start where we lived, in Weston Favell, Northampton, and make my way to Peterborough Cathedral by a series of circular walks, each one of which must touch another somewhere on its circumference. I went on my 2000+ km way reciting the mantra ‘Better Together’ to anyone listening. If the Church of England is to survive, it needs to pool its resources, regardless of tradition. We need to love each other more, and understand that what unites us is far greater than what separates.  To that first strapline I later added ‘Better in Colour’, meaning that we need to be diverse and enterprising in the way we spread the Gospel. Finally, I put in a third leg, ‘Better than we think we are’, because the Church of England is/has been a wonderful organisation at the heart of our nation.  We should ‘strengthen our feeble knees’.  As Russ Ballard and Rod Argent once sang ‘Hold your head up’…

I reached Peterborough in late 2021, and you can read about the entirety of that project at:

https://walkingtopeterborough.blosgspot.com

The question arose, ‘what should I do now’.  After a gap, partly enforced because of Covid lockdowns etc. I decided to start chain-walking to other neighbouring dioceses, starting in the Spring of 2023. Same straplines, different blog:  https://vinculafido.blogspot.com  - something about ‘chains of faith’ – but you know how Latin mottoes are – they never quite make sense.

As you can read, I’ve been to Leicester, and now I’m on way to Lincoln. The new blog’s lay-out is different. To find the various past posts, you need to hit the button marked ‘archive’ on the left-hand side of the front page. This time there’s less nerdy detail, and a pop-rock related title for each post. There are snippets of verse and poetry. Apart from that the mixture is as before: commentary on what I see as I walk, and thoughts about our faith. I go out roughly once every ten days/fortnight, so please come back and see me from time to time. To contact me further, please use my regular email:  vincecrossmusic@gmail.com 

‘The Circle Game’ is an early track by Joni Mitchell ( ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ 1970 ).  I take it to be a song about reincarnation, so it’s not an obvious choice for a Christian.  But it manages the extraordinary trick of being both sad and optimistic at the same time, and it relates neatly to my walking patterns.  Carousels have never been the same since Mark Gertler’s 1916 painting ‘Merry-go-round’, which probably inspired the publicity for that deeply affecting show,  ‘Oh what a lovely war!’


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